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Neha Tripathi triumphs

Sports Reporter

— Photo: S.R. Raghunathan

Neha Tripathi receiving the winner’s trophy from N. Murali, Managing Director, The Hindu.

Chennai: Neha Tripathi clinched the Gold Division title at the Madras Ladies Open golf championship here on Friday, sealing the win at the final hole of the final round, pipping the Delhi trio of Shreya Ghei, Vani Kapoor and Gurbani Singh by a single stroke.

Having begun the final hole of the tournament level with Neha, Shreya and Gurbani shot bogeys — Gurbani’s par putt curving inches wide — to hand the Kolkata girl a chance to putt for the title. She made no mistake.

Neha began the third and final day at 7-over, a stroke ahead of overnight second place Gurbani and two ahead of Shreya. After extending their leads over Shreya by a stroke each over the first five holes, Neha and Gurbani threw away their advantage at the next one.

Two pairs of bunkers flank the fairway at the par-five sixth, dividing it into thirds. While Shreya managed to avoid all of them, the two girls ahead of her couldn’t, and took seven strokes each to get on the green.

Dropping strokes

Neha’s triple-bogey and Gurbani’s quadruple brought the lead threesome within a stroke of each other.

Meanwhile, playing without the pressure of being in the lead group, first round leader Vani Kapoor shot par over the front nine, including birdies on the third and ninth holes, to go from being five strokes adrift of Neha to start the back nine a stroke in front.

Snakes and ladders

From this point, the contest became less a round of golf than a game of snakes and ladders, with one player climbing above the others at one hole before slipping back down at the next. Teeing off at the sixteenth, all four players were tied at 16-over for the tournament.

Vani, on a run of three straight bogeys, lost another stroke to slip behind the other three, who all shot par, with Shreya and Neha missing reasonably straightforward birdie putts to wrest the lead.

N. Murali, Managing Director, The Hindu, presented the trophies to the winners.

The results (final round):

Gold Division: 1. Neha Tripathi (Kolkata) 232, 2. Vani Kapoor, Shreya Ghei and Gurbani Singh (all Delhi) 233.

Silver Division: 1. Aditi Ashok (Bengaluru) 252, 2. R. Premalatha (Chennai) 271, 3. Sehar Atwal (Delhi) 272.

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